want to see an amusing display of ignorance?

comparing people to nazis and hitler in order to evoke hatred is a time-honored tradition of the foolish and ignorant. (when i say "ignorant", i don't mean to be insulting; i've already covered that with "foolish") in fact, the same thing is happening in the islamic world, except that they don't really have a hitler, so they use "satan". bush is satan. america is the great satan. Saddam Hussein is hitler. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is hitler. how does it feel to be as foolish and ignorant as the people you hate?

i'm not saying that these guys are angels, or that they haven't committed horrible crimes. but, by comparing them to hitler and the nazis so lightly, you end up cheapening the crimes that hitler and the nazis committed. tyrant puts down a revolt, and kills thousands of opposition members. wow, he's like hitler, who also killed a lot of people... like... thousands.

but, let's rewind a little. the quote above doesn't even mention Saddam Hussein or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as if it's good enough just to call them megalomaniacs and leaders of iran and iraq. i would hazard to guess, and only because i see a lot of this nowadays, that this person has a fundamental lack of understanding of the situation in the middle east. Ahmadinejad is the president of iran. what about the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei? ever heard of him? how about the majlis or the council of guardians? iran has politics, just like the US has. it is not some nameless, formless enemy. "the agents of iran", "the megalomaniac", and "iran's rulers" are gross oversimplifications that serve to make it easier to demonize iran. it's easier to hate an enemy whose face you cannot see. staying ignorant of the real situation over there is a comfortable mindset, but won't lawmakers be able to make better policy decisions if they actually understand what's going on? and, won't the public be able to form better opinions if they understand what's going on?

i'm showing a little bias here, but i knew all about the shiites, sunnis, and kurds before we got into this iraq "fiasco". and, here we are, with a nice little civil war brewing in iraq. bias or no, this is just what i feared would happen. and anyways, i'm not afraid to have a bias against people are repeatedly and consistently wrong.

looking forward, i'd probably be interested in what countries have shiite majorities, sunni majorities, secular governments, etc.. and, i'd wonder what to do about the kurdish populace, who seem to be a minority everywhere. sure, it's a little more complicated than the catchy and clever "axis of evil", but i have a few cycles to spare. it's not called running from a fight; it's called coming up with a plan that will work.

wait, aren't we supposed to be talking about the military's earth simulator? nevermind..

this reminds me of the computer in heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. that's all.

you see that hole in the middle of the cd, where there's nothing but clear plastic? the media i use now fits in that hole, has much greater storage capacity than cd-roms, and doesn't make my computer sound like a 747. its storage capacity will catch up to dvds sometime this year, and maybe even hd-dvds in a few more years. plus, it's rewritable, so i don't need to have a hundred.

if content delivery is solved by high speed internet, i have no doubts that content storage and transportability will be solved by flash memory. i don't think performance will be an issue.

more thoughts:

• reason #1, of course, is that online music downloads are starting to displace cd music sales. plus, online movie & tv show download sites are already popping up everywhere, both legal and bootleg. google (and others, i'm sure) is building data centers all over the place in order to facilitate online content delivery. and on and on... it's already a foregone conclusion, and record companies don't seem to be doing much to soften the blow. maybe they hope to still be selling audio cd's for $15 a pop when optical disc readers don't exist anywhere outside of austin powers movies.
• one hundred years from now, people are going to have a good laugh at the silly concept of listening to music from a disc spinning at 10,000 rpm's. someone could get hurt.
• will hd-dvd and blu-ray have a chance to take off? why buy a hd movie in the form of a physical disc when you can get it through your digital cable pipe, or maybe download it (legally) from somewhere on the internet? will tv-via-internet be allowed to compete with cable?
• since sd memory cards come in 512 mb and 1024mb capacities, but not 700mb, record companies can release smaller albums for the same price, as well as albums with extended tracks for a higher price! ha ha!
• you can sell the music from kiosks. hi, amazon, connect your shit to retail stores via kiosks. write full albums to sd cards in 30 or so seconds, or single songs instantly. have a ready supply of all the popular albums, then "restock" your hits during idle cycles.
• offer to write to the customer's sd card, or sell him a new card. the memory companies will love it. i wonder if sd cards can be manufactured so that once the kiosk writes to them, they can't be written to ever again. at least, the average consumer will never figure out how..
• with no more need for record stores, i guess those employees will have to find something else to do. someone who is dedicated music can find a new job creating online promotional material: reviews, amazon lists, word of blog, viral marketing, etc. there's no helping it.. the current business model, including distribution and promotion, is doomed. all these middle-men are going to have to adapt or starve.
• will performance be an issue? 52x cd-read is 7.8 MB/sec, 20x dvd-read is 26.4 MB/sec. is that burst transfer rate or sustained? class 6 sdhc cards can read/write at least 6MB/sec. in a less formal system, i see a lot of 133x and 150x sd cards, reaching read/write speeds of up to 20MB/sec and 22.5MB/sec. sandisk claims up to 40MB/sec. will the average consumer even care about anything above 5-10 MB/sec?
• i understand the current sd standard, 2.0, will only support up to 32gb. so, if we want something that beats hd-dvd capacity, we'll need a new standard.
• can sd cards handle long term archiving? so far, i don't trust a cdr/dvdr to last more than 5 years, or 10 years for the good stuff. a shelf full of sd cards, instead of 4 shelves vhs tapes, cds, and dvds, would be nice to have.
• my cowon d2 supports sdhc cards, and when i connect the player to my computer, i see the device and the sd card it contains, separately.
• i'm ripping a 4-disc set to ogg-vorbis, and i have to re-number the tracks on discs 2-4 manually. what a pain in the ass.